Taxonomy
The Kerry slug is a gastropod, as are all other snails and slugs, including slugs and snails that live in saltwater, those that live in freshwater, and those that live on the land. This is a land slug which breathes air, a pulmonate. It is in the clade Stylommatophora, which means that its primitive eyes or eye spots are carried on the tips of its two upper tentacles. Despite superficial similarities, not all land slugs are in the same family or superfamily. The Kerry slug is an arionid, or round-backed slug; it has no keel on its back, in contrast to the land slugs in the family Limacidae and Agriolimacidae. It also shares numerous internal anatomical features with slug species in other genera within the family Arionidae, including the Arion slugs, which are most typical of the family.
The Kerry slug's scientific name or binomial name is Geomalacus maculosus. It is in the genus Geomalacus, a name which literally means "earth mollusc". Its specific name maculosus means "spotted", from the Latin word macula "spot". The English language vernacular name (or common name) is derived from the name of County Kerry, which is the county in the southwest of Ireland where this species was first collected, and the type locality which is mentioned in the original description.
The scientific name of the species is also sometimes written as Geomalacus (Geomalacus) maculosus. This is because the genus Geomalacus contains two subgenera: the nominate subgenus (subgenus of the same name) Geomalacus and a second subgenus Arrudia Pollonera, 1890. The subgenus Geomalacus contains only one species, the Kerry slug. The subgenus Arrudia includes three species.
This slug species was originally described and named from specimens collected in Ireland. In 1842, an Irish naturalist named William Andrews (1802–1880) sent material that he had found at Caragh Lake in County Kerry to the Irish naturalist George James Allman, who then introduced the slug to science as a new species.
Kerry slug has been included in molecular phylogenetic studies since 2001.
Read more about this topic: Kerry Slug